It would appear that a large number of people who should be speaking out
can't because elected persons in the Democratic Party have yet to give
them their marching orders.

That's the difference between ethics and partisanship -- you're witnessing it right now.

And the difference between courage and silence?

Look at 'leaders' like John Conyers and Barbara Lee who cower instead of
speaking out as the suffering of the Iraqi people is set to hit the 14
year mark in mere days.

The Mosul Slog continues with little criticism while tiny steps are treated as huge progress. ALJAZEERA runs John Davison's REUTERS report, "Iraqi forces battling ISIS/ISIL
faced tough resistance from snipers and mortar rounds on Monday as they
tried to advance on Mosul's Old City and a bridge across the Tigris
River in their campaign to retake it." XINHAU reports:

Iraqi forces on
Monday liberated two neighborhoods from the Islamic State (IS) militants
in the western side of Mosul, while the troops continued fighting
fierce urban warfare in the old city center, the Iraqi military said.The commandos of the Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) completely freed
the neighborhoods of Nafet and New Mosul in the western side of the
city, locally known as the right bank of the Tigris River, which bisects
Mosul, the Joint Operations Command (JOC) said in a statement.The recapture of the two neighborhoods brought the CTS troops closer
to the western edge of Mosul's densely populated old city center, where
hundreds of thousands of civilians are believed to still be trapped
under IS rule.

MUST WATCH:
A chain of #ISIS suicide car bombs followed by an airstrike inside #Mosul city captured on video by Federal police units. #Iraq

3 replies105 retweets101 likes

Brett McGurk is giddy about the operation, as FRANCE 24 explains:IS "is trapped. Just last night, the 9th Iraqi army
division... cut off the last road out of Mosul," said Brett McGurk, the
US envoy to the anti-IS coalition."Any of the fighters
who are left in Mosul, they're going to die there," he said. "We are
very committed to not just defeating them in Mosul, but making sure
these guys cannot escape."

Trapped?

Maybe that would be a term better used for the civilians still in Mosul, the ones the Iraqi government told not to leave.

And now it's time for house-to-house searches -- a time when even more abuses tend to take place. Meanwhile Human Rights Watch issues an alert which includes:

The Iraqi
interior ministry is holding at least 1,269 detainees, including boys
as young as 13, without charge in horrendous conditions and with limited
access to medical care at three makeshift prisons, Human Rights Watch
said today. At least four prisoners have died, in cases that appear to
be linked to lack of proper medical care and poor conditions and two
prisoners’ legs have been amputated, apparently because of lack of
treatment for treatable wounds. Two detention centers are in the town of Qayyarah, 60 kilometers
south of Mosul, and the third at a local police station in Hammam
al-Alil, 30 kilometers south of Mosul. At least one detainee has been
held in Qayyarah for six months, with many others detained since
November 2016. According to the Qayyarah prison staff, at least 80 of
their detainees are children under 18, with the youngest being 13.
Children are in Hammam al-Alil as well. “The deplorable prison conditions in Qayyarah and Hammam al-Alil
show that the Iraqi government is not providing the most basic detention
standards or due process,” said Sarah Leah Whitson,
Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Iraqis should understand
better than most the dangerous consequences of abusing detainees in
cruel prison conditions.” On March 3, 2017, Human Rights Watch visited two of three houses in
Qayyarah the Iraqi government has been using since retaking the area in
August to detain men and boys suspected of being affiliated with the
Islamic State (also known as ISIS). On March 12, researchers visited the
local police station at Hammam al-Alil, which is holding 225 people
accused of varying crimes, including ISIS-affiliation, in four rooms.
Human Rights Watch was unable to interview detainees, but spoke to
prison staff. The prisons are under the authority of the Interior Ministry’s
intelligence service, which provides services there together with the
Justice Ministry. Staff said that Iraqi security and military services
combatting ISIS hand over people they detain to the intelligence
service, which holds the detainees in the facilities while individually
interrogating them. The intelligence service then takes the detainees before an
investigative judge to assess whether there is enough evidence to bring
charges for supporting ISIS under Provision 4 of the Federal Iraqi
Counterterrorism Law (no. 13/2005). The judge then either orders their
release or transfers the detainees to Baghdad to face charges. Prison staff in Qayyarah said they had released about 80 detainees
and transferred another 775 to Baghdad by early March 2017. Iraq’s
Criminal Procedural Code (no. 23/1971) requires detaining authorities to
bring detainees before an investigative judge within 24 hours. But
Qayyarah prison staff said they had held some detainees for as long as
four months, while Human Rights Watch learned of the case of the man
held without charge for six months. Prison staff in Qayyarah said that the investigative judge had
cleared at least 300 men for release who are now being held unlawfully
after the National Security Service, a security body under the prime
minister with a mandate to screen people fleeing ISIS-controlled areas,
intervened. Security forces’ failure to comply with a judicial order for
release is a crime under Iraqi law. If the security forces are failing
to comply with judicial orders in a systematic manner as part of a state
policy to ignore such orders and detain people arbitrarily, this could
represent a crime against humanity. Prison staff in Hammam al-Alil said they had released 115 detainees
and transferred another 135 to Baghdad. They said they have been holding
at least 60 men since the detention site opened in November, 2016. The prison staff and Justice Minister, Haidar al-Zamili, who met
with Human Rights Watch on February 2, 2017, said that detainees held on
terrorism charges have no right under the counterterrorism law (no.
13/2005) to communicate with their family during the investigation
period, and that the Qayyarah detainees have not been allowed to
communicate with their families. A local judge overseeing the cases told
Human Rights Watch that once a detainee has been brought before the
investigative judge, they have the right to contact their families, but
that family visits are being delayed because of the delays in bringing
detainees before the judge. They also said that despite the Iraqi constitution and Criminal
Procedure Code (no.23/1971) guaranteeing detainees the right to a lawyer
during interrogations and hearings, none had been provided with a
lawyer present during their interrogations and many did not have a
lawyer during their hearings before the investigative judge. Human Rights Watch observed that the facilities are all extremely
overcrowded, so that no detainee can lie down to sleep. Because of the
overcrowding and lack of proper ventilation, the makeshift prison cells
are overheated, with an incredible stench. Detainees at the Hammam
al-Alil prison called out to the visiting Human Rights Watch
researchers, begging them to crack open the door because they said they
could not breathe. The detainees have either no time or minimal time
outside their cells, eat inside their cells, and have no access to
showers and limited access to bathrooms. The facilities have no medical
support, contributing to the deaths and amputations, prison staff said. While the staff said they were trying to improve conditions, they
could not reduce the overcrowding. The overcrowding may have been
exacerbated due to a temporary freeze, in early 2015, on transfers of
prisoners to Baghdad due to the cost of such transfers, a Qayyarah court
official told Human Rights Watch on March 11, 2017. He said that the
transfers had resumed in mid-January. Prison staff in Hammam al-Alil
said that on March 11, they were asked to accept another 11 prisoners
but refused, saying there was simply no more room. One interrogator in Hammam al-Alil said that he sometimes beats ISIS
suspects, and an observer who visited the prison in February 2017 said
he witnessed the ill-treatment of three detainees. Detainees charged and convicted may still be entitled to release
under the General Amnesty Law passed in August 2016 (no.27/2016), staff
said. The law offered amnesty to anyone who joined ISIS or another
extremist group against their will, and did not commit any serious
offense, like torture or killing. The head of the Iraqi parliament’s
legal committee, Mohsen al-Karkari, told Human Rights Watch during a
meeting on February 7, 2017, that it was a roundabout way to limit the scope of the wide-reaching Iraqi counterterrorism law and release of thousands of terror suspects. According to the Justice Ministry, authorities have released 756 prisoners since the law was passed. Human Rights Watch learned from a reliable source that the Iraqi
government had sent a committee to review conditions in the facility a
few weeks before the Human Rights Watch visit. The committee promised to
send up to 20 more interrogators from Baghdad, to speed up
investigations. On March 2, 2017, 10 interrogators had arrived at the
Qayyarah prisons. The evidence documented by Human Rights Watch strongly suggests that
conditions at the Qayyarah and Hammam al-Alil facilities are hazardous,
unfit to hold detainees for extended periods of time, and do not meet
basic international standards. As a result, holding detainees there
probably amounts to ill-treatment. The state of the facilities and
severe understaffing pose severe risks to the prisoners, the prison
administration, and the local community. The authorities should transfer all detainees from these facilities
to official prisons built to accommodate detainees, and equipped to meet
basic international standards. Until that happens, the Interior and
Justice Ministries should, as an urgent priority, improve the
conditions, and speed up the investigative process so that it can
transfer the prisoners out of the facility as quickly as possible. The
ministries should provide all detainees a medical screening upon
arrival, and ensure access to medical care. The authorities should also ensure that there is a clear legal basis
for detentions, that all detainees have access to legal counsel,
including during interrogation, and that detainees are moved to
facilities accessible to government inspection, independent monitors,
relatives, and lawyers, with regular and unimpeded access. They should
immediately notify families of the detention of their loved ones and
under which authority, promptly take detainees before a judge to rule on
the legality of their detention, and immediately comply with any
judicial order for release. Judges should order the release of detainees or prisoners being held in inhuman or degrading conditions. When prosecuting children alleged to have committed illegal acts,
they should be treated in accordance with international juvenile justice
standards. International law allows for authorities to detain children
pretrial in limited situations, but only if formally charged with
committing a crime, not merely as suspects. The authorities should
release all children not yet formally charged.

“The Iraqi authorities should immediately release the children it is
holding in these hellholes unless they promptly charge them with a
crime,” Whitson said. “Iraq should recognize and treat children accused
of ISIS affiliation as the victims of illegal and unconscionable
recruitment and exploitation by the group.”

Brett McGurk's ignoring that as well. But he did make time to meet with the President of the KRG.

Hopefully, he addressed politics since elections in Iraq are not far off.

Mustafa Habib (NIQASH) reports:For some time now it has been clear that Iraq’s Shiite Muslim militias have political ambitions.
The militias were formed by volunteers in 2014 in order to fight the
extremist group known as the Islamic State, but have since become a
semi-official part of the Iraqi military.Comments made by influential leaders of the various Shiite Muslim militias often have the same impact
as statements made by senior politicians and military, and it’s been
clear for some time that they plan to use their popularity and
importance to enter politics.As the fight to push the Islamic State, or IS, group out of the
country proceeds, and looks likely to end in success sometime in the
next few months, the militias are looking toward their political
futures.

“The militias will be present in politics in the same way they were present on the battlefield,” Qais al-Khazali,
leader of one of the most feared and respected militias, the League of
the Righteous, said last week. “In the same way that we win the battle
against the IS group, we will win the fight against corruption and
unemployment. Because the militias exist thanks to God’s will.”Sources say that most recently the various militias had been
negotiating alliances between themselves that they could capitalize on
in upcoming Iraqi elections.“Over the past few days there have been closed door meetings held to
discuss the future of the militias and how they will participate in the
elections,” said one source, who had to remain anonymous due to the
secretive nature of the meetings. The militias discussed participating
in Iraq’s upcoming provincial elections, currently due to be held in
September 2017, and then federal elections, due to be held in April
2018. The idea of putting them all together on one electoral list was
floated by Iranian advisers.

However, there are a lot of obstacles to getting the various
militias, which are far from a homogenous group, to cooperate. Political
tactics are very different from those on the battlefield.

The US government is in bed with the League of Righteous -- Barack made
sure of that in his first year when he released their leaders as a deal
to get 4 British corpses and 1 surviving British hostage released.

The US government has done so much to destroy in Iraq (but last week's
award given to Queen Raina of Jordan is supposed to wipe away all of
that?).

Certainly, the rights of women were among the things the US government destroyed.